GNOME is a complex and sophisticated desktop environment that can be used on any Linux distribution, on top of a window server, such as X11 or Wayland. It is a 100% free and open source project. It can be described in many ways, but the most important things to know when talking about GNOME is that it is usable, accessible, customizable, international, user-friendly, organized, supported, intuitive and very attractive.

The GNOME development platform

The GNOME development platform is also an important part of the GNOME desktop environment, providing an extensive, developer-friendly framework for building applications that integrate into the rest of the desktop. With GNOME, the user is in control of everything, as the desktop is simple and easy to use, helping you get things done quickly. It is finely crafted and gives you easy access to all of your data.

The default desktop environment of numerous Linux distributions

It is the default desktop environment of many well known Linux distributions, such as Fedora, Red Hat, Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu GNOME, as well as some BSD flavors, such as GhostBSD.

Bottom line

Many recent desktop environments were inspired by GNOME, including Cinnamon and MATE. But the truth is that this is one of the best desktop environments for Linux-based operating systems. It is our preferred desktop environment.

GNOME was reviewed by Marius Nestor, last updated on February 22nd, 2015